I'm just not sure how sunflowers would predict winter

We are up in Pinetop for the summer and the sunflowers are blooming everywhere. We were told that, according to Native American folklore, the sunflowers indicate the kind of winter to expect. The problem is, we didn't hear the rest of the story. What kind of growth predicts whether the winter will be mild or severe?

Well, that's the first I've ever heard of that.

I'm not saying that this idea is right or wrong, especially since you didn't specify just exactly how sunflowers might possess such weather-predicting powers.

I actually kind of like sunflowers, but I have never ascribed any special skills to them, other than being able to turn their sunflower faces to the sun. They do this with some sort of hydraulic power, which we won't go into just now, but it is a fairly amazing talent.

Anyway, there are all sorts of stories about how various signs in nature might help predict the weather. I have no idea how many of them are based in reality.

These things include the annoyance factor of corns and bunions, the coloring of woolly worms, the thickness of spider webs, the way smoke rises out of chimneys, and so on and so forth.

I have no idea how reliable any of this is, especially the part about worms. As a not-especially-talented fly fisherman, I've often used woolly-worm lures and they never did me a lick of good. But that's probably just me.

Anyway, a woolly worms' coloring has to do with its age and how well it has fed, and not with what the coming winter might be like.